How pathetic is it that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain are taking a stronger stand on Syria than the United States? On Monday, those three Gulf nations–none of them a paragon of democratic virtue, to put it mildly–all withdrew their ambassadors from Damascus in protest against Bashar al-Assad’s massacres of his own people.

There is, of course, a sectarian edge to this act–Assad and the ruling clique are Alawites, an Shiite offshoot, while most of those who are getting massacred are Sunnis. The Saudi, Kuwaiti and Bahraini ruling families are of course, Sunnis, too. One might even cynically conclude they see nothing wrong with slaughtering Shiites–as the Bahraini security forces have been doing lately with Saudi help–but, Sunnis are a different story.

Leave all that aside, however. What matters is they are taking a strong stand against Assad’s brutality, and we are not.

I have been ambivalent about whether we should have an ambassador in Damascus. Robert Ford, our current representative, is a great diplomat who knows Arabic and knows the region; he performed heroically by going to the embattled city of Hama to call attention to regime abuses. But his movements are increasingly curtailed by the regime, and it is not clear how much more he can accomplish. At this point withdrawing him–while also enacting tougher sanctions as demanded by more than 200 members of Congress–would send a stronger signal of U.S. disapproval for Assad’s criminal policies.